BERKELEY — If you want to know good the UCLA men’s basketball team will be in the future, ask the St. Mary’s High players.

For the second straight week, the Panthers are set to go toe-to-toe with a blue-chip UCLA recruit.

Last Saturday, St. Mary’s “held” Modesto Christian’s Reeves Nelson to 27 points in a 82-70 win in the NorCal Division IV title game. Nelson is a 6-foot-7 forward who verbally committed to play for UCLA in the fall of 2009.

Today, the Panthers face senior guard Jrue Holiday and the rest of the Campbell Hall-North Hollywood basketball team in the Division IV state championship at 1:30 p.m. at Arco Arena.

The teams met in the 2005 state final with Campbell Hall beating St. Mary’s 74-53.

Holiday, who was a freshman in that game, is Rivals.com’s third-ranked recruit this year and will play for UCLA in the fall.

“We are only missing one recruit,” said St. Mary’s coach Manny Nodar. “If we had played Mitty, I could have given a breakdown on how UCLA will be.”

That recruit Nodar is referring to is Archbishop Mitty senior Drew Gordon. Gordon and Mitty reached the Division II state title game.

He was a key reason Campbell Hall cruised through the SoCal playoffs, beating its three opponents by an average of 41 points.

“I am very impressed with (Holiday),” Nodar said. “He is very smooth in all aspects of the game.

“He knows how good he is, but he’s not arrogant about it.”

But Nodar and company have made a habit of shutting down key players. Against Modesto Christian, the Panthers (33-1) used their defensive prowess to limit Nelson and D.J. Seeley to a combined 45 points.

Seeley and Nelson had averaged a combined 59 points in the previous two NorCal games. St. Mary’s also held Seeley, a senior guard bound for Cal, to 18 points, 17 below his previous two-game average.

St. Mary’s rotated Chris Brew, Demetrius Lee and Aalim Moor at Seeley for the first three quarters to slow him down, and then had Will Brew defend him in the final period. Will Brew held Seeley to two points. The Panthers also used Dominique Lee to front Nelson with his teammates helping out on the opposite side.

But Campbell Hall, unlike Modesto Christian, has three players averaging double figures and another two capable of putting up big numbers.

“They are long and tall,” Nodar said. “And they get the ball into the hands of their scorers and do a good job of not panicking.”

The Vikings’ starting lineup features one player, Austin Broom, under 6-0.

St. Mary’s counters with a lineup that may not have a 6-6 center but does have all five starters over 6-0. The only thing missing is a UCLA recruit.

(Click here if you are unable to view this photo gallery on your mobile device) The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek celebrates the life of its founder Ruth Bancroft who died at 109 on November 26, 2017. The Ruth Bancroft Garden is a nonprofit public dry garden that was planted by Mrs. Ruth Bancroft in 1972 and was opened to the...